Efforts have been made to disinfect or sanitize toilets for more than a hundred years, as evidenced by the patent to Warren which was granted in 1882.
Prior art devices to effect sanitization of toilet bowls have generally taken three forms, namely: (1) by hanging a water soluble deodorant bar from the rim of the toilet bowl itself, as for example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,668,717 granted June 13, 1972 to Curran; (2) by hanging a container of disinfectant chemical from the rim of the side wall of the water tank or otherwise disposing it in the tank, as illustrated by U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,591,817; 2,807,807 and 4,318,891; and (3) by feeding some type of solution into the overflow pipe within the toilet tank, as illustrated by U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,570,934; 2,697,841 and 4,312,082.
The present inventor has been of the view that the third approach to the toilet bowl sanitization is the best, but the prior art devices have been either too expensive or complex and/or wasteful of the sanitizing chemical utilized in such prior art devices.
Where the device is complex it invariably becomes quite expensive both to acquire and have installed, since in most instances the installation will have to be accomplished by a licensed plumber. Where the device is wastful of the sanitizing chemical, it may not only over-sanitize the toilet bowl, but the chemical-containing receptacle or vessel will have to be replaced quite frequently. It should be remembered that with respect to the more than one hundred million flush toilets which are found in the vast majority of homes in the United States, the cleaning and servicing of the toilet usually falls to the housewife or to a domestic helper, neither of whom may be particularly qualified to undertake even any minor plumbing replacement of sanitizing chemical containers of the prior art devices. Thus, the less frequently a container has to be replaced in order to provide adequate sanitization and the simpler the replacement operation, the more any such sanitizing device is likely to be utilized. Moreover, as an inherent concomitant, the simpler the device and the longer it lasts, the less expensive it will be for the user.